diff --git a/src/llama.cpp b/src/llama.cpp
index c3da3c43..3b6a21d8 100644
--- a/src/llama.cpp
+++ b/src/llama.cpp
@@ -8801,12 +8801,14 @@ static int llama_decode_impl(
     //llama_synchronize(&lctx);
 
     // decide if we need to defrag the kv cache
-    if (cparams.causal_attn && cparams.defrag_thold >= 0.0f) {
-        const float fragmentation = kv_self.n >= 128 ? 1.0f - float(kv_self.used)/float(kv_self.n) : 0.0f;
+    if (cparams.causal_attn && cparams.defrag_thold > 0.0f) {
+        // - do not defrag small contexts (i.e. < 2048 tokens)
+        // - count the padding towards the number of used tokens
+        const float fragmentation = kv_self.n >= 2048 ? std::max(0.0f, 1.0f - float(kv_self.used + llama_kv_cache_get_padding(cparams))/float(kv_self.n)) : 0.0f;
 
         // queue defragmentation for next llama_kv_cache_update
         if (fragmentation > cparams.defrag_thold) {
-            //LLAMA_LOG_INFO("fragmentation: %.2f\n", fragmentation);
+            LLAMA_LOG_DEBUG("%s: fragmentation: %.2f - requesting defrag\n", __func__, fragmentation);
 
             llama_kv_cache_defrag(kv_self);
         }